The White Sands National Monument & Missile Range

This is the utterly bizarre, and totally incredible White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, USA. The monument is the southernmost part of a 710 square kilometre (275-square mile) field of startlingly white sand dunes, which are composed of gypsum crystals which are water soluble, but as there’s no sea outlet, all the dissolved gypsum from the surrounding mountains collects here instead.

You can picnic, sandboard, and take guided orientation and nature walks here, however I’m pretty sure the guides won’t let you wander too far, as the monument is within the White Sands Missile Range. They actually close the monument to the public roughly twice a week to conduct tests! The most famous weapon tested at this range was the first ever detonation of an atomic bomb on July 16, 1945 – the infamous Trinity Test.

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They let you walk around pretty much wherever you want. There is a fence at the edges of the public area (which is quite large; I’d estimate that it’s more than half of the total area of white sand). It’s easy to get lost if you aren’t on a marked trail (marked with reflective blaze orange plastic stakes every couple hundred feet or so) though, so if you don’t have enough water or a jacket (to protect your skin in case the wind picks up and you get sandblasted) it can be pretty rough.

Looking at the images more carefully and remembering the times I’ve been there, I think the public area is just under 1/4 the total are of white sand, but it’s still a really big area that you can’t totally explore in two days.

While I’m on a posting storm, people should zoom out some and move north to the big black stripe. That’s the Valley Of Fires National Monument. There was a slow volcano at the north end, and the lava slowly filled the valley. You can camp and hike around up here:
View Placemark / Google Earth

Thanks for the post, and thanks to Jarrod for recommending Valley of Fires… two places I didn’t know anything about! I’m moving to New Mexico (Albuquerque) in a few weeks, and these are some sights I’ll definitely have to check out!

I grew up in El Paso (Texas) and we went to White Sands quite often when I was a kid. Closest thing we had to a beach, being about 700 miles from any ocean. Here’s a photo at ground level taken almost 40 years ago. Thanks for the memories.

It looks like a long water reservoir to me. It probably feeds the entire base with the drinking water necessary to survive out in the desert. There aren’t any lines painted on this “runway”, which would be against standard protocol, not to mention unsafe.

I agree with Geoffrey.
It just doesn’t look like a runway. There are buildings and stuff on both ends and I can find absolutely no typical markings. Compare it to other airfields â€“ even Area 51 has more obious, regular marked runways.
A water reservoir or something like that seems quite possible to me â€“ although I don’t think they would allow such a huge surface of water to evaporate.

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